1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to network textures and their producing methods.
2. Description of Related Art
Soft matter such as block copolymers (BCPs), surfactant-water systems, and liquid crystals can form regular structures on the micron to nanometer scales. Much attention has been paid to complex three-dimensional (3D) interconnected network structures as they are self-supported and have high specific surface and high porosity.
In particular, three bi-continuous cubic phases formed by two continuous interpenetrating networks, including double gyroid (DG, Ia3d), double diamond (DD, Pn3m), and plumber's nightmare structure (double P (DP), Im3m), have drawn much interest due to their complex and periodically regular configuration. The continuous nature of nanoscale textures combined with their unique structural and physical properties has sparked immense interest for applications such as catalysis, separation, nanoreactor and optoelectronic devices. Moreover, because of the two chiral networks, the double gyroid (DG) structure has attracted much interest.
The basic shape of the gyroid is a three-fold junction of three arms, in which each arm connects to another planar set of three arms that are each themselves rotated and connected to form a three-dimensional (3D) network. The double gyroid (DG) structure is composed of a cubic matrix and a pair of continuous, interpenetrating but independent, coherent single gyroid (SG, I4132) networks, one left- and one right-handed, to form an achiral structure in 3D space. By contrast, the single gyroid (SG) structure is a chiral structure with only one continuous network; the network can be left- or right-handed. However, single gyroid (SG) is rare, and can only be found in some specific systems such as the butterfly wings from Papilionidae and Lycaenidae families (V. Saranathan, C. O. Osuji, S. G. J. Mochrie, H Noh, S. Narayanan, A. Sandy, E. R. Dufresne, R. O. Prum, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., U.S. Pat. No. 2,010,107, 11676) and triblock terpolymers (T H Epps, E W Cochran, T S Bailey, R S Waletzko, C M Hardy, F S Bates, Macromolecules 2004, 37, 8325-8341; S Vignolini, N A Yufa, P S Cunha, S Guldin, I Rushkin, M Stefik, K Hur, U Wiesner, J J Baumberg, U Steiner, Adv. Mater. Adv. Mate. 2012, 24(10), OP23-OP27). The butterflies develop the thermodynamically favored double gyroid (DG) precursors, in which one of the two single gyroid structures is decomposed to form a single gyroid (SG) structure with significant optical efficiency. This three dimensional (3D) periodicity potentially manipulates light in all directions, giving bright reflected color over a broad angle. Note that single gyroid (SG, I4132, No. 214) is the subgroup of the supergroup double gyroid (DG, Ia3d, No. 230); namely, the symmetry of single gyroid (SG) is lower than that of double gyroid (DG). To obtain a single gyroid (SG) structure via artificial manufacturing requires great effort.